Checking in baggage and obtaining a boarding pass for travel via common carriers (e.g., commercial air or cruise line) can be inconvenient and time-consuming. The time required for checking baggage and obtaining a boarding pass has been made even more cumbersome after added security measures adopted following the terrorist airplane hijackings of Sep. 11, 2001. A need exists to provide the traveling public with improved services that permit convenient and secure interim baggage storage, remote passenger and baggage check-in, and timely transfer of baggage from a remote property to a common carrier point of departure.
Services are known in the art for advance pickup of passenger baggage from a remote property and direct delivery to an airport for check-in. However, such prior services typically require long lead times, such as for example, up to 12 to 24 hours, before airline departure time, permitting baggage screening during off-peak periods. In addition, boarding passes are not issued in advance.
Prior attempts have been made to improve remote baggage processing. For example, Certified Airline Passenger Services (CAPS) of Las Vegas, Nev., attempted to provide remote passenger and baggage processing from 1998 until 2001. CAPS used hotels as a point of remote baggage check-in, providing a third party check-in counter in hotel lobbies. The CAPS service was not integrated into hotel operations. Instead, these check-in counters and related staff members were made available to hotel guests as a clearly separate service being offered by a third party other than the hotel. Hotel guests could check their baggage and pick up boarding passes at a hotel lobby station, thus avoiding both activities at the airport.
The CAPS approach suffered from several limitations and eventually the company was unable economically to continue its service. For example, the CAPS approach used CAPS employees whose sole function was baggage and passenger processing. Such staffing proved costly. Employees were occupied for only limited times (when customers were checking bags) but needed to be available for long periods of time (whenever customers might request the service) and the service would only be used by passengers if the fee charged were minimal (e.g., $6.00 per passenger). Some economies of scale could be achieved at mega-hotels (e.g., 4000+ rooms), but the number of such hotels are limited and larger hotels require more employees to support times when many guests want to check bags at the same time.
Another example of an attempt to improve common carrier baggage processing systems is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,512,964 entitled Baggage Transportation System and listing Quackenbush, et al. as inventors. The Quackenbush patent describes using the Internet to capture travel information from a user including an origin location and a destination location. The baggage is collected from the origin location, taken to an origin airport where it placed on a correct flight, and delivered from a destination airport to the destination location.
The Quackenbush patent fails to provide important teachings that may ultimately determine the viability of the service when implemented, if ever. The Quackenbush patent indicates that a Ground Delivery Operator (GDO) picks up baggage from an origin location and takes it to an origin airport. However, there is no teaching of how customers check in baggage. It is not clear if the passenger has to wait for a GDO to travel to where the customer is or, if a GDO is located at the remote property, how staffing issues are addressed. Indeed, there is nothing in the Quackenbush patent that helps solve the staffing problems faced by known remote baggage processing systems, such as the CAPS service.
Thus, there is a need for an improved common carrier passenger and baggage processing system. Further, there is a need for a remote common carrier passenger and baggage processing system that cross-utilizes employees at the remote property. Even further, there is a need for baggage and passenger check-in kiosks for such remotely located common carrier passenger and baggage processing systems.